What started as a good thing went bad—thanks to HRC and Barney Frank.
The New York Health Department reported a 62% spike among MSM. Those numbers have a lot to teach us.
Hold a mirror up to gay generalizations and you’ll see the humor in it all.
A New York Times story on young gay married men presented dry stereotypes.
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By MICHAEL LUCAS
Friday, May 11, 2007
What were the writers at V Magazine getting at when they said queerty.com is “toxic to the gay community”? Looking at a Queerty post from May 8, for example, you can find a story about the murder of Harley Walker titled thusly: “Body of Missing ’Mo Found.” There are times when joking is called for but other times when it is inexcusably vulgar and tasteless. Queerty’s Editorial Director David Hauslaib and its Editor Andrew Belonsky should in the future definitely consider how a murdered gay person’s loved ones would feel upon seeing such a heading as “Body of Missing ’Mo Found.”
The top of Queerty’s home page says the site won Best Gay Weblog in the 2006 Weblog Awards. There are two competitions with overlapping names: the Weblog Awards and the Bloggies. Queerty actually won a Bloggie. If you go to http://2006.weblogawards.org/, you’ll see that the 2006 Weblog Award for best LGBT blog went to pamshouseblend.com, which reports and comments on gay interest matters in a consistently appropriate tone.
Whatever factors Bloggie voters consider when deciding which LGBT blog is the best, they evidently are not considering editorial conscientiousness. Here is the final paragraph of Queerty’s May 8 post on the murder of Harley Walker:
An autopsy of
Walker’s badly decomposed body shows that died of a stab wound to the chest. Hardly the penetration he expected when he logged onto that website. But, sadly, one we’re hearing off all too often. If only people could relate face-to-face. What a wonderful—and potentially less scary—the world would be.
That was copied verbatim off the site; the grammatical and typographical blunders you see there are typical of the sloppiness showcased on Queerty. In matters of substance, the second sentence, “Hardly the penetration he expected when he logged onto that website,” in reference to the murder victim’s alleged cruising of a gay Internet site, is beneath all contempt. It shows that the people behind Queerty are fatuous, by which I mean they are smug and unaware of their own stupidity.
QUEERTY HAS ACTUALLY of late become obsessed with me, in the way Bill O’Reilly is obsessed with Rosie O’Donnell. I have personally attempted to make Editorial Director David Hauslaib aware of how he should be more responsible toward the gay community. His rebuff is that “it’s all in good fun.” Sorry, Mr. Hauslaib; certain things should be considered beyond the reach of “fun.” Mr. Andrew Belonsky, spitting his smelly saliva into my face, argued that his writing is contemporary.
Queerty has frequently made joking, slighting, inaccurate references to Israel in regards to its record of civil rights for gay people. I do not want to get into exposition of specific points of specific arguments because the Queerty attitude is that they can make any old sophomorically jokey comment and not have to defend it seriously and logically, though they are countering and belittling people for well-thought-out positions clearly expressed. The alarming truth, meanwhile, is that gay people living among the Palestinian Arabs are subject to so-called “honor killings.” Queerty has a habit of promoting political views that abet and strengthen, rather than stop the criminals guilty of those “honor killings.” Were Hauslaib and Belonsky to suddenly find themselves the victims of honor killings, I doubt they would think it was “all in good fun.”
WHEN QUEERTY FIRST
appeared in 2005, it had an excellent writer in the person of Bradford Shellhammer. He happens to maintain an entertaining and appropriate gay blog centered on his life at bradfordshellhammer.com. Bradford enjoys a certain visibility and prestige, having been, for example, a contributing editor to Genre magazine. After he left Queerty, he became gravely disappointed by the irresponsible, unprofessional direction it took, and requested that Hauslaib remove his name from the Queerty masthead.
With characteristic arrogance and inconsiderateness, Hauslaib ignored Bradford’s request until Bradford finally wrote him a very strongly worded letter. Bradford, however, must not be looking at the site these days. If you scroll to the bottom of the home page, click on “About” and then on “History,” you see that Hauslaib still includes Bradford’s biography and photo as though he were a current editor-at-large.
There are plenty of great gay-interest sites you can visit on the web. At towleroad.com, for instance, you can find Andy Towle’s tasteful take on the gay scene presented with a pleasing modern graphic. Keith Boykin may be read at keithboykin.com, commenting enlighteningly and seriously on gay interest matters. To expand your understanding of the prejudices transgender people face in this society, you could read herwife.com, which tells about transgenderism from the partner’s perspective.
A whole wealth of sites that nourish rather than mock the gay community is to be found on the Internet, so why would anybody frequent the despicable Queerty, which desecrates the memory of a gay man stabbed to death by saying, “Hardly the penetration he expected when he logged onto that website”?
Michael Lucas is the president and CEO of LucasEntertainment.com. You can read more about his thoughts and his XXX movies at LucasBlog.com.
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